Responding to Google Reader’s Immanent Shut-Down

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In not-mini-related news, Google is killing off Google Reader on July 1. Reader’s a key tool in how I use the internet (in the past I’ve asserted that if you don’t use Reader, “You’re doing the Internet wrong”), so I’m pretty steamed about it.

I’ll get over the BLINDING RAGE this news inspires in me, but what I hope I don’t get over is the lesson this represents: do not over-rely on a single service that might be arbitrarily dropped. This is why Lifehacker suggests you get your own personal domain for e-mail; sure, people can reach me at gmail.com, but what if something happens to Gmail? I can point rushputin.com to whatever I want it to.

What if something similar happened to Blogger? I’m fast approaching my fifth year of blogging on WarpstonePile; it would be devastating for that to just vanish in a cloud of smoke one day.

Now, you might never expect them to kill Blogger; but then, I certainly never expected them to kill Reader… and with Blogger, there’s an active movement within some groups (the OSR) to shift discussion out of blogs and into Google+ (which I’ve never thought wise).

So, it’s a good thing I own WarpstonePile.com. You are accessing this via WarpstonePile.com and not WarpstonePile.Blogger.com, right? One is future-proof, the other, very not-so-much.

So: over the next few months, I’m going to try to transition as much as I can out of the Google world and into something else. I’ve been a .NET developer for what’s fast approaching a decade: I’m already dependent on Microsoft to meet my technical needs: why shouldn’t I rely on them for e-mail, for example?

I doubt I’ll be wholly successful: I don’t know of an alternative to Authenticator (which everyone should use for everything they can use it for). I’m already getting heartburn from trying to move to Firefox out of Chrome.  I’m going to try, though, and in doing so mitigate the risk inherent in overly relying on a company with a proven record of taking things that work away.

This is important: as a result, I fully expect to transition both this blog and my considerably less active RPG-focused OwlbearStabbings out of Blogger and into WordPress over the next few months.

  • This could get a little dicey around here. They might look bad, they might go up or down, or not work correctly. There might be a wagonload of broken image links. Bear with me on all of that.
  • Make sure your links, etc, all refer to WarpstonePile.com and not anything with Blogger or BlogSpot in the address. My domain will go to wherever this blog’s new home is. The Google-centric URL will continue to point to Blogger, which will eventually get a “Hey, I’ve moved!” and nothing more.
  • I really appreciate your patience in this.